Chapter 68-Just once

Chapter 68: 68-Just once

Luan had learned one important thing about Old Scaris during the first few hours of the trip. He learnt that there were far too many places to hide and yet, somehow, every time he thought he had found one, he couldn’t escape hearing about the whiteblood.

It was becoming infuriating. He cursed at his vampure hearing. He wanted the excitement surrounding the whiteblood to end soon so that things could go back to normal.

All the talks and comparisons between him and Kayden was hitting a sensitive nerve in his body.

Luan had spent the last several minutes wandering through one of the quieter corridors of the hotel, deliberately choosing the passages farthest from the student gathering areas.

He had already escaped his friends twice, avoided three groups of students who wanted to gossip about the student council, and narrowly missed Joam when the blackblood had started another conversation about how impossibly attractive Kayden was and asked him to guess who would be the lucky vampire to get kayden to love them.

The last thing Luan wanted was to hear another word about him. Unfortunately, fate seemed determined to make that impossible.

Luan rounded a corner and he stopped. He stood still and stared ahead at the handsome cold prince at the middle of the hallway.

Kayden was leaning against the opposite wall waiting for Varitreya. He heard footsteps and smelled the familiar scent of the blueblood heartthrob and looked up.

Their eyes met. White eyes and blue eyes locked deeply, one carrying mischief and the other holding immense annoyance.

Luan immediately turned around. "Nope. Not happening," he refused to stay another minute alone with Kayden.

He started walking in the opposite direction. He was fuming mad, his blood boiling and his skin burning with rage. He felt the urge to lift his middle finger to the trip and rush back to the academy or go home. Anywhere that didn’t include being in the same environment with Kayden.

Hahaha. Hahaha.

Behind him came a quiet laugh. "Running away already?" Kayden asked, finding the action amusing.

Luan ignored him. His footsteps became faster, he was nearly running. Annoyed by the casual tone that Kayden took with him that lacked his usual coldness and mighty aura.

Kayden pushed himself away from the wall when he realized that Luan was serious about leaving. "Luan."

He received no response. Luan didn’t stop or turn around. He had no idea why he got chills when he heard Kayden call out to her so softly.

"Class heartthrob," his sweetened tone called again.

Luan’s shoulders stiffened, part of him wished to turn back and argue with the whiteblood but he remained stubborn and kept walking.

"Pretty boy."

Luan stopped. His fingers curled into a fist. The gist tightened until his knuckles whitened. He blinked, repeating all the names Kayden used, finding it strange.

Since when were they so close that Kayden used nucknames with him? Slowly, he turned around.

Kayden was smiling at him. It wasn’t the polite smile he gave professors or the distant expression he wore around most students. The smile he gave him was different.

It was mischievous and almost boyish. The same expression he had worn when they were younger, back when their families had forced them to spend time together during royal functions and blood council gatherings.

Luan hated that smile. It was a smile that once fooled him to think that blood didn’t matter, they were equals and then puberty hit and differences came wide open and he realized how foolish he had once been.

"What do you want?" He asked, sounding indifferent as he didn’t want to show any emotions towards the whiteblood.

Kayden walked toward him. "To talk. Is that okay?"

"We have nothing to talk about," he instantly became defensive and stepped back.

"That’s unfortunate," Kayden’s smile got even wider and he kept ambling closer and closer.

"Not really," Luan shrugged and turned again.

Kayden caught up effortlessly. In a blink of an eye and he was standing before him. "You’re avoiding me, aren’t you?"

"I’m not."

"You turned around the moment you saw me," he argued.

"Coincidence."

Kayden’s amusement grew stronger. "You sped up when I called out to you. How do you explain that."

"I’m a vampire. I walk fast."

"You almost ran," he didn’t drop the matter and refused to let Luan act otherwise.

"I was in a hurry."

Kayden smiled. Finally some truths from him. His mind raced back to the daring intimate move that Maisa pulled with Varitreya and wondered if one day Luan would dare to make such a move with him.

His smile froze in place, he knew the answer to that question. Luan was in love with Addessa and not him. The blueblood had already given his heart away to someone else and treated him as a rival for hearts around the academy.

"To get away from me?" He asked, amusement lingering in his tone and eyes but his heart felt the opposite.

Had he been Addessa, Luan would run towards him and not hurry in the opposite direction and that realization hurt him, deep to the core. It was the reason he disliked Addessa so much.

Why of all the people did Luan have to give his affections to her? What was so special about her that made her the queen of Luan’s heart? Kayden always wondered.

Luan glared at him. "You’re insufferable. Why shouldn’t I get away from you?"

"And yet you haven’t stopped talking to me," Kayden joked but the words "insufferable" hit his chest harder than he could ever care to admit to Luan or anyone else.

"Because you won’t leave me alone," he fire back. "I just want to get as far away from you as possible."

The proud whiteblood felt the blow of those words. It took everything he had to remain there, standing and smiling like he wasn’t affected by the blatant rejection from the one who has owned his heart since as long as he could remember.

"Exactly. It’s precisely because you want to get away from me that you feel the need to come close to you."

Luan sighed. "I hate you. Can’t you see that?" He raised, however, none of that was true.

He didn’t hate Kayden, he just hated how insecure he becomes when Kayden is around. How he falls short of a vampire others look up to when standing next to Kayden and how the ice prince eats up all the sunlight, leaving him, the heartthrob with no room to shine... and he does so without doing anything.

Kayden hated hearing that. He clenched his fist, the ground beneath his feet moved a bit before he composed himself.

How easy it is for Luan to reject him without even realizing that he was rejecting him. ’To you, it can be everyone else but me, right?’ He thought.